Focus
Question

Multimedia
technology is when the students are able to learn with different technology
like PowerPoint presentations or academically based video tapes. Teachers can
use this effectively to create and share visual information by always bringing
some time of technology into the lesson like a WebQuests or a PowerPoint to enhance
the lesson so that the students can see it. This allows the students to member
by a picture or can later go back to look at when reviewing. Not having
multimedia technology causes the classroom to not be able to grasp the concepts
or be able to use it for a project.

Tech
tool Link

This
website is very fun to navigate through you can show the student different
artists’ paintings and you can also teach them about different art techniques. The
students can create their own picture and it’s a great tool because they can
show you that they know what they learn or if they understand the concepts.
This website is a must use website and pretty self-explanatory on how to go through
it. Above is a sample of what your can do with the website.

Summary

This
chapter showed me a lot of new ways to teach my students using the multimedia
technologies and showed me the differences between not being able to use it and
being able to use it. I never realized that the technology is useful until now,
I remember being a little girl and seeing my teacher use the overheads and it
caught my attention but now I see all of this technology it is way more interesting.
I would hate having to erase all my lessons and do them over and over again for
each class that came in that day. Multimedia is very useful for teachers and
our students being able to look back on it verses memorizing what you need to remember
and a 50 50 chance that you would leave a little bit of information out.

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

A
wiki is a website or blogspace that is collaboratively edited and maintained by
a group of people (EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative, 2005, July). Wikis are
basically used to help students out with the lessons or objectives being presented
to the class. Teachers can use them to promote collaborative learning by
letting students create their own or to follow the teachers. Wiki gives the
students control over what they learn and what they need to learn. Teachers can
assign students to create their own on certain topics like science/history projects
then allowing a presentation to the class. Teachers can even create their own
wiki and then present it to the class then have the class add on as the lesson develops
and even grade the page to the rubric the teacher creates for this assignment.

Moodle seems to be a very interesting
website although I did not download it on my computer I did watch the video
below and found that it can easily be used and has some great resources for the
students to like online test and resources. I would recommend this be used in
classrooms everywhere it is kind of like a blog or a wiki page. Children can
take test and do it numerous times depending on teacher. It gives them the control
instead of learning in one way which would be the way the teacher teaches her
classroom.

This
chapter revolves around ways that teachers and students can communicate ideas
online and in the classrooms. It teaches us as future teachers how to be able
to teach our students in many ways whether it be wiki, blogs, or just one
website. The tech tool links used are all informative to teach us how to set up
different websites and how and what to use them for. Students should be able to
communicate with peer/teachers through the internet and in person. I know I have
said this before but I wish I knew how to make blogs or my own wikispace in
high school it would’ve came in handy when I wanted to do a big project but
didn’t want to use PowerPoint or just a simple poster. This chapter really kept
me on my feet on how effective blog posts or wikispaces can be to our future
students.

Friday, March 1, 2013

We as educators will be introduce to
many online educational software and not knowing how to evaluate them for our students
could be dangerous of our classroom. Knowing how to evaluate and what and why
to look for certain signs is very helpful. Here are a few I have learned:

1)Minimize the
Use of Games that Teach Isolated Skills. This
way states that instead of focusing on how to kill of the enemy find games that
focus on I am solving this problem to keep myself or item of home safe from
them by keeping the problem going. The way I saw it was that most kids like to
play these educational games because they get to kill the enemy so fast or they
focus only on how they are killing them. It also make the student depend on
that game system to learn the objective when in reality they aren’t learning
anything but how to kill of the enemy not the concepts of the lesson.

2)Scrutinize Games That Function Solely on Points Won or Lost.
In some educational games the children
get status, tokens, or empires that need to be attended to, organized, and
negotiated (text pg. 196). These types of games can have a horrible effect on
students because it cause them to act with higher power or become discourage
because of their status on the game. Another, downfall would be that the games
allow predators to get online and contact the children without
educators/parents knowing it. Looking through the game thoroughly is a great
way to secure that the children will not get caught in this obstacles.

3)Discuss Games and Their Content. Unfortunately for us there is no way around the violence or
predators that are out there. Taking away the game is not a solution it only
causes the student to be more into because they haven’t experienced it and it
won’t address gaming outside the school. Students need guidance from their
adults just saying “this is not good for you” will not cut it. Discussing video
games or the television shows is a great way to show guidance for the kids.
This technique allows conversations about the messages behind the commercials
or the real meaning of the television show. Playing the games before or with
the child is great a great guidance technique.

4)Play Games Together. Playing
games with the children and at the same time critiquing the game allows the
child to identify the value of the games and TV shows.

This tech tool link is very hard to understand on the
website but it would catch my interest as a child because of the cool animation.
I would not use this tech tool link unless I had a better understanding on how
to use it for a better purpose. I did enjoy this video on how to create your
own broadcast but I’m still unsure on how to use it.

Summary

This
chapter was very informative to me because it taught me that some educational
software isn’t very educational for the right purpose. It also taught me ways
for the future to evaluate the educational software/games before or while
giving them to my students. It was very good to know that sometime this games
that children play aren’t as educational as they seem and I should really focus
on the games and their purposes.